Fighting back after my Mastercare nightmare

Marie Griffiths kept her patience with the Dixons stores group for six months, but last week she finally snapped.

With the help of a colleague, she launched a cunning web-based campaign against the electrical retailer - which owns Dixons, Currys and PC World - after what she calls her "Mastercare nightmare". Mastercare is its after-sales technical support department.

Over the next few days, boosted by advertising on search engine Google, she had hundreds of visitors to her site, www.mastercare.blogspot.com and has received more than 250 emails from disgruntled customers and former employees.

As a "service" to the company, Marie has been keeping a tally of the potential sales she claims it has lost because of its behaviour. On Wednesday evening, the total had broken the £250,000 mark.

"I am really amazed at the volume of emails I have had from disgruntled customers who have had similar experiences to myself," she told Jobs & Money.

The saga began on December 21 last year. She walked into Currys in Woking and saw what she believed to be a superb bargain - a 32-inch flat screen, widescreen TV going for £250.

Two days later, she says, her ordeal began. On December 23 the TV broke down. On the 24th an engineer fixed it. Three days later, the whole screen went green. "I phoned up and they said they would get me another one." A date was set for January 3. "I took a whole day off from work and waited in, but no one showed." Marie called and discovered there had been a "communications error". She was later told an engineer would have to examine the TV before it could be replaced.

An engineer eventually came on February 15 and informed her the screen was green and that it needed taking away for repair. "I told him, 'I know that, that's why I called!' but he couldn't take the TV away that day, so we had to set another date for collection."

Two men came to collect it on March 8. Ominously, one said to her jokingly: "You won't be seeing this set again soon." Little did she know how right he was. The weeks passed and still no TV arrived.

After scores of calls, at the end of April she got a delivery date: May 17. Four days before then, she was assured everything was ready. The day before, Marie called one final time to make certain the TV would arrive. To her horror, she was told there was no log of any TV to be delivered to her address. "I was cross and fed up and that's when I decided to start my web log."

A colleague who had a web log himself suggested the idea so that other people could read about her experience. Within a few minutes she had published a detailed outline of the affair. "I was amazed how easy it was. I'm not a techie, but it took me just five minutes to set up." Last Friday night came and a final call confirmed the TV would arrive after 1pm. But... "We stayed in on Saturday afternoon and waited until 7pm, but nothing arrived."

On Monday she decided to bring on the heavy guns. She placed an ad on Google, which ranks its ads according to how frequently they are clicked on and how much the advertiser is prepared to pay. Marie placed an ad under the title "Why NOT to buy from the Dixons Stores Group" with a link to her web log.

While Marie's advertising account remained in credit, typing "Mastercare" and "Dixons" into Google ranked the ad above Dixons' own advertisement. Considering Marie's budget of £4 per day versus the potential millions the company could spend, it is a testament to how popular Marie's site became that it ranked above the Dixons ads.

On Tuesday, internet news site The Register got wind of Marie's campaign and ran a short story on it, boosting the hits to Marie's site.

A spokesman for Dixons told Jobs & Money an investigation was ongoing: "It's probably a simple case of human error and we deeply regret it."

He promised to apologise to Marie as soon as possible and said the company would not ask Marie to remove the site because "we believe in freedom of speech".

But Marie is not impressed - and fully intends to keep her website going.